Melqart, properly Phoenician Milk-Qart "King of the City", less accurately Melkart, Melkarth or Melgart, Akkadian Milqartu, was tutelary god of the Phoenician city of Tyre as Eshmun protected Sidon. Melqart was often titled Ba'l ur "Lord of Tyre", the ancestral king of the royal line. In Greek, by interpretatio graeca he was identified with Heracles and referred to as the Tyrian Herakles. Melqart was venerated in Phoenician and Punic cultures from Syria to Spain. The first occurrence of the name is in a ninth-century BCE stela inscription found in 1939 north of Aleppo in northern Syria, the "Ben-Hadad" inscription, erected by the son of the king of Arma, "for his lord Melqart, which he vowed to him and he heard his voice".